The Schwartz Report

Microsoft To Offer Xamarin Free and Open Sources Core Platform

Microsoft executive VP for cloud and enterprise Scott Guthrie kicked of the second day of the company's Build conference for developers by announcing it will offer the Xamarin tooling for cross-platform free of charge. Xamarin offers popular tooling for developing mobile apps based on the .NET Framework and C# language. Guthrie said Xamarin, which Microsoft last month agreed to acquire, will be available free of charge to all Visual Studio developers including those using the company's free Visual Studio Community edition.

Attendees responded to the news with rousing applause because it will open the path for .NET developers to build C# based applications that can run natively on iOS, Android and Windows without recompiling them for each platform. Microsoft announced its plans to acquire Xamarin last month.

Further looking to extend the reach of Xamarin and .NET Framework, Guthrie also announced that Microsoft will contribute the Xamarin core platform to the open source community via the .NET Foundation that Microsoft created last year. The .NET Foundation is an independent organization to bring collaboration between the open source and C# developer communities.

"This means everything you need to run a Xamarin app on any device is open source," Guthrie said. "We think this makes Xamarin more attractive for mobile development for any device." The .NET Foundation received a major boost from Red Hat, Unity and JetBrains, who are the latest to join, Guthrie announced. "It's a really exciting time to be a .NET developer and we're excited to see .NET apps be built."